Methods for characterization of biochromatography media.

Chromatographic methods represent the most powerful techniques for purification of biopharmaceutical compounds. Quite often, the question arises which chromatographic medium should be chosen for a particular purification task or which technique should be applied to obtain the required information for a process, respectively. The present review aims to guide through these questions by presenting experimental and modeling techniques that allow a detailed characterization and comparison of chromatography media as well provide a guideline of techniques for process development. The first section provides basic information on chromatographic theory, types of chromatographic media, and different types of techniques. The second section governs description of experimental techniques including some advises for laboratory practice. The third section presents and discusses selected references from literature. Within this article, the main focus is on traditional laboratory techniques but also automated high-throughput screening methods will briefly be discussed.